


softly softly know me (hold my hands in error)

by notcaycepollard



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Finn's recovery, M/M, Multi, OT3, Recovery, brought to you by: have you SEEN Oscar Isaac playing a guitar tho, it is intolerable, quiet moments of a rebellion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 15:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6664342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now, now that he's Finn, he can look at people's faces any time he likes. And he does, he does, he fills his eyes with how Rey and Poe smile and laugh and frown and cry. Rey's smile doesn't appear often, but when it does, it's blinding, wide and joyous in a way that Finn has to glance away from with how <em>fierce</em> she is, an expression that burns his eyes. Poe's laugh makes his eyes crinkle; he throws his head back, wipes tears away with his knuckles, and he's so beautiful it makes Finn want to capture this in a holo, every time. He watches as Rey grits her jaw, as Poe bites his lip, as both of them cry over him when he comes out of the coma, and he knows, he <em>knows</em>, why the First Order covered its soldiers' faces, because every expression from Rey and Poe makes Finn love them so much his heart feels too full with it.</p><p>But- it's their hands that undo him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	softly softly know me (hold my hands in error)

It's their hands he really falls in love with first.

Back in Stormtrooper training, back when he was FN-2187, he wore the armor they'd given him pretty much day in, day out. Covered from head to toe in molded plastisteel, as close to identical as they could make him. He'd wondered, when he was on long watch assignments and had space in his head to wonder, why they hadn't stuck with clones if they'd wanted everyone so impersonal.

(It took more power to break someone of their identity when they'd had someone unique to break every time, Finn thinks now, and Hux is nothing if not committed to power.)

Anyway. Anyway. There'd been a few situations, and a few pieces of armor, it was more or less acceptable to remove. The gloves, usually. If they got wet, it was impossible to maintain a grip on anything, and working down in sanitation, hip-deep in wastewater pipes or clearing a flood in the overflow drain, you needed a grip on something. Mostly, the trooper next to you. FN-2187 hadn't even minded the wet or the cold or the smell that the mask never filtered out, not with someone else's small hand gripped palm-to-palm with his own.

In the mess, too, it was acceptable, even encouraged, to take off the gloves. They were designed to work with the grip of a blaster, but not to hold a spoon, and after working all day in who knows what muck, nobody wanted that touching their rations. The helmet, too, they'd pulled off during meal assignments - impossible to eat with a face-plate blocking your mouth - but everyone had learned fast you didn't make eye contact while the masks were off. Eyes down, faces held as neutral as you could make them, _no talking._ Not when voices weren't being modulated by the helmet, not when you'd be able to hear emotion by the way someone's voice shook a little or rose in anger or dropped low in gentle encouragement. 

 _Hands_ , though, they were within sight even with your gaze held low, and perhaps there was something about the sight of bare skin that made Finn feel human, that made them  _all_ feel a little less like a soldier and a little more like people with names and faces and something inside the armor. 

They'd developed code, in the subtlest of ways. Holding a fork a certain way, touching your index finger to the table. Curling your hand in on itself, brushing your own fingertips against your palm. Holding whole conversations in nothing more than delicate little flickers of their fingers, as surreptitious as they could make them.  _I'm tired. These protein rations are the worst. I killed someone today. How are you? Holding up, soldier?_

 _I'm scared_.

_I'm hurt._

_Please help._

Probably the officers had known, or suspected. Maybe they even had code of their own. Finn doesn't know why else they didn't ban it, or punish the troopers who'd made the signing too obvious. Perhaps they were just as human as everyone else, needed the contact just as much. Perhaps they just didn't care.

(There was one other time the helmets and gloves came off. They'd slept in stripped-down armor-suits, uniform from wrist to ankle just as much as ever, and in the dark nobody could see your face. But FN-2187 had fallen asleep with someone else's hand warm in his more times than he can count, and he thinks, maybe, that press of skin against skin held more power than anything Hux could have broken out of them.)

 

Now, now that he's Finn, he can look at people's faces any time he likes. And he does, he does, he fills his eyes with how Rey and Poe smile and laugh and frown and cry. Rey's smile doesn't appear often, but when it does, it's blinding, wide and joyous in a way that Finn has to glance away from with how _fierce_ she is, an expression that burns his eyes. Poe's laugh makes his eyes crinkle; he throws his head back, wipes tears away with his knuckles, and he's so beautiful it makes Finn want to capture this in a holo, every time. He watches as Rey grits her jaw, as Poe bites his lip, as both of them cry over him when he comes out of the coma, and he knows, he  _knows_ , why the First Order covered its soldiers' faces, because every expression from Rey and Poe makes Finn love them so much his heart feels too full with it.

But- it's their hands that undo him. Poe's hands, first. He'd seen him captured, being led up onto the _Finalizer_ in binders, and he'd been so used to avoiding looking at faces he'd done it without thinking at first. Glanced back, and had to blink away again with the mute, forsaken despair on the pilot's face. A man going to his death with nobody coming to save him, and he'd known it, and FN-2187 had averted his eyes at the sight of how much it  _hurt_. Looked, instead, at Poe's hands, curled into loose fists, and Finn had translated the message without even thinking.

_Please, help me. Please._

He'd pulled his helmet off in the rescue, because Poe had so clearly needed a face to make contact with, to believe there was a chance, and the eye contact, the  _expressions_ , they were so hopeful that Finn had hardly been able to look down at Poe's hands. Wrists still in binders, fingers outstretched, and Force, Finn had  _wanted_. Longed to pull off his gloves, and clasp Poe's hands in his, and tell him,  _I'm your hope_.

If he had, he thinks, it would have made losing Poe on Jakku a hundred times harder. Instead, there's Rey, and Finn had grabbed for her hand without thinking, and she'd shaken him off.

"I don't need you to hold my hand!" she'd told him, full of bright and painful independence, and Finn had thought,  _no, no, that's not- I need, though_.

When she'd reached out for him, dragged him to his feet, the warmth of her hand tight in his had probably been enough that Finn had fallen right there. And then he'd watched her eat, and fuck,  _fuck_ , if he hadn't already been halfway in love with her by then, just watching how Rey had grabbed at every different fruit Maz had to offer would probably have tipped him straight over the edge. Maz might be able to read his eyes, but Finn had read everything Rey's hands had to say, and the way she'd grabbed as if she was always hungry for more and desperately afraid it would disappear, her scramble to taste everything new, it was clear in every curve of her fingers.

 

While he's still in the medbay bed, when he can't do much except wait to heal, Poe plays a lot of guitar. At first Finn just drifts to Poe's voice, the soft hum of it in a language Finn doesn't know. It's the gentlest sound Finn's ever heard. When he comes out of the haze of stims, he can watch Poe play, watch him pick out chords and melody even when his voice falls silent. He keeps his nails cut short so they don't catch on the strings, and his wrists, his fingers, are more fine-boned than Finn realized at first. Delicate, like birds fluttering, when he plays. His hands on the scratched wood of the guitar might be the most beautiful thing Finn's ever seen.

When Finn's been out of the coma three days (he's counting, still shocked the Resistance have put so much into healing him instead of decommissioning like would have been resource-efficient) Poe hesitates for the first time, his voice breaking on a note.

"I-" he says, swallows, plucks at a string and listens to the note hang resonating in the air. "I owe you, buddy."

"No," Finn says, "no, you don't." _You asked for help_ , he doesn't say,  _everything about you begged for it, and- you saved me too_ , and he's able now like he wasn't then to reach out, to take Poe's hand in his. The bacta tank has softened Finn's skin, washed away the calluses on his palms, and against his hand, Poe's is rough. He can feel small lines of scarring, the thickened skin on Poe's fingertips that must only come from guitar strings. Poe's hand is as warm as Finn imagined it would be, and he doesn't have blood on his mouth anymore, just fragments of songs that Finn's never heard before but which he could listen to every chance he gets.

Rey comes in every evening, gleaming with the Force from her training. At first she sits on the floor, and Finn can't tell if it's because he's still too fragile for her to risk jostling, or whether she needs the space. Then she's on the foot of his bed, and then curling in against him, and when he's finally moved from the medbay to his own bunk, she presses in even closer, watches Poe play all rapt attention and her fingers interlaced with Finn's.

"Do you want to learn?" Poe asks her teasingly one night, his fingers stilled on the strings, and Rey shakes her head at first before she sits forward, curious.

"How?" she says, and Poe passes her the guitar, lets her strum fumblingly with it for a few minutes before he leans back against the wall, pats the space between his thighs. Rey crawls into the V of it, settles herself with her hand pressed to Poe's knee, and Finn can hardly breathe with how Poe's pulling her in against his chest, wrapping himself around her so he can show her how to hold her hands, where to put her fingers for the chords. He adjusts her fingering, moves her fingertips from one string to the next, and when they play together, halting and full of laughter, Finn can only look at their hands moving together.

 

Three months after he recovers, he stops counting his days, and something switches in his brain, and he realizes he hasn't thought of himself as a soldier for a long, long time. It's not that he's ever thought about it as if there's blood on his hands. He made the decision that he'd never kill for the First Order, and he  _would_ kill for the Resistance, knows he has and would again, but deciding he's not a soldier, getting to make that choice, there's freedom in it too.

He offers his help to Dr Kalonia, and she begins to teach him. Just the easy bits, patching up small wounds and healing little injuries, but the first time he sutures someone closed, with hands that don't shake at all, it feels like an accomplishment. He peels off his gloves afterwards, and touches Pava gently on the shoulder, sending what warmth he can through his palm to her skin.

"You're all set," he tells her, "don't try handling raw metal by yourself next time, maybe?" and she closes her eyes, leans into his hand as if for comfort.

"Thanks for your help, Finn," she says after a minute, "I feel better already," and Finn sends her away with rolled eyes and a grin.

He's in the mess after his shift ends, peeling an orange and breaking it into segments, when Rey and Poe pile in either side of him. The two best pilots in the Resistance, now, hotshots both of them, and back from their training run. Rey immediately grabs a piece of his fruit, laughing as Finn smacks her fingers away, and Poe unzips his flight suit, presses in all warm and dishevelled against Finn's hip.

"Save lives today, medic?" he asks, easy and light, and Finn laughs, eats a quarter of orange before he replies, fights Rey for another segment.

"Yeah," he says, dry, "rescued Pava from a truly life-threatening scratch, alright. I don't know what she would have done without me." There's juice running down his wrist, and he lifts his hand, tilts his arm to catch it with his tongue, and hears Poe's laughter trail off into very loud silence.

When he looks up, both of them are staring, rapt and intent, and Finn blushes before he even gets what's going on.

"What-" he asks, and Poe gnaws his lip, and Rey eats another piece of orange, unblinking. Finn considers what just happened, and very deliberately sucks the pad of his thumb into his mouth, licks it clean. Poe makes a low noise in the back of his throat, and Rey goes so still Finn doesn't think she's breathing at all.

He's always known he watches  _their_ hands. He'd never contemplated that they might be watching his just as closely. This is a choice too, and Finn's floating in the freedom of it, and he knows before he says anything exactly how it'll be. Doesn't need sign language or code to read it from their eyes.

"Well," he says, pulling his thumb away and opening his hands wide, palms up, "are you gonna come get it or what?" and there's a long beat before Finn finds himself being kissed by both of them, sweet and fruit-sticky and still buzzing with hyperspace in their blood.

 

Rey's hands are always dirty, smudges of engine grease on her knuckles and earth under her nails. She's discovered the Resistance greenhouses, is learning from the droids how to dig and weed and plant. She gets up with the light, crawls out of bed while Finn and Poe are still muttering about it being too early, disappears off to examine what her plants have achieved in the night, and the first morning she comes in with carrots, tiny and golden and still tasselled with their long green leaves, she looks triumphant.

"I grew _food_ ," she tells Finn and Poe, and then eats everything including the leaves. Poe is alarmed by it - what if she gets _sick_ - but to Finn it's just endearing; he pulls her down into their bed, smells the sunlight on her skin.

"Bring enough to cook, next time, and I'll learn how to make something with them," he suggests, voice husky with sleep, and Rey grins bright and pleased at the idea.

One day she brings him a fistful of flowers, roots still attached and dirt clinging to them.

"Brought you flowers," she tells him unnecessarily, abrupt in the way Finn's learned is Rey's fall-back when she's giving a gift to someone (gifts _matter_ , when you've nothing to give). She avoids his gaze, finds a jar and fills it with water, shoves them in, sets it down on the tiny durasteel table in their shared quarters. "I grew them."

"They're lovely," Finn says, because anything Rey grows would be beautiful, and nobody's ever brought him flowers before, "but- I think you picked them too soon." They're still buds, plump and tightly furled, and Finn can feel how they'd tilt themselves up and open under the warmth of the sun.

"No," Rey says, looks sideways at him, smiles soft and quiet and careful like she has a secret she's going to share. "Watch." And then her hands, dusted with pollen and rich dark earth, are curving around the flowers, cupping but not touching, and Finn  _feels_ her draw on the Force, and the flowers unfurl, petals opening as if Rey is the sun. They're soft and huge, silken and delicately ruffled, and Rey touches her fingertip to the edge of one petal so carefully Finn's heart aches.

He looks at Rey's fingers, the bones of her wrists, and imagines himself bloom under her hands.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk star war with me: notcaycepollard.tumblr.com

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] softly softly know me (hold my hands in error)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7690753) by [notcaycepollard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




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